Union Representing Portland Museum of Art Workers Affiliates with Maine AFL-CIO

The Technical, Office and Professional (TOP) Union, UAW Local 2110 has just affiliated with the Maine AFL-CIO after working with workers at Portland Museum of Art to form a union and negotiate a first contract last year.

“We are very pleased to have worked with the Maine AFL-CIO. The team there has been very responsive and we really appreciate how they partnered with us through all this,” said Maida Rosenstein, President of UAW Local 2110. “We’re really happy to have workers in Maine who are part of our union and look forward to learning more about the state. We hope there will be more organizing for us there.”

Local 2110 is an amalgamated union with 30 contracts covering 3000 employees in universities, publishing, museums, law firms and other offices. It represents teachers, secretaries, administrators, editors, computer operators, librarians, museum curators, typesetters and graphic artists, among many others. Besides PMA, Local 2110 has contracts with the ACLU, Columbia University, HarperCollins Publishers, the State Bank of India, Union Theological Seminary and more. Currently it is in the midst of a mail-in ballot election at the Jewish Museum of New York. PMA is the first workplace the union has organized in Maine. 

Local 2110 specializes in representing workers in non-profits and "white collar" workers. The union says it has broken new ground in helping these workers win benefits like childcare, flex-time, job classification, domestic partner benefits and family leave. Most recently it has worked with employees of museums and cultural institutions — sectors that historically have not been heavily organized. Local 2110 was originally an independent union called District 65 that was primarily based in the New York City area. Some of its units like the HarperCollins union were founded back in the 1940s. In 1978 it became affiliated with the United Auto Workers and changed its name.

In recent years, a surge of interest among museum workers in forming unions has kept Local 2110 busy. Rosenstein says a major reason for this wave of organizing is because museums and cultural institutions have been rapidly expanding to respond to increased tourism. But even as hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed into these institutions and visitorship has spiked, workers haven't seen much of that money trickling down to their paychecks. Museums began depending on more and more temporary, seasonal and part time employees. Then the pandemic hit, spurring a series of furloughs and layoffs as museums shut down.

“It was made clear to these workers then that they really had no control over their own work lives,” said Rosenstein. “For a long time museums have acted like you have to be a trust fund baby to work there so don’t expect to make any money. But as museums have expanded and staffing becomes challenging, employees are looking for better and more equitable pay, job security and improved workplace safety.”

Welcome to the Maine AFL-CIO, Local 2110! We looked forward to building power together!